


Between the Waves

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [247]
Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Feelings Realization, M/M, Schmoop, Time Accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-04 16:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18347600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Maybe Bruce shouldn’t have been surprised by how quickly Clark took to being a pirate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Golden Age of Piracy. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

Maybe Bruce shouldn’t have been surprised by how quickly Clark took to being a pirate.

It was an accident, of course, that they’d ended up here, stuck in this very particular and very mercenary moment in Earth’s past: Starro, a run-in with Rip Hunter, and a battle in the timestream that had ended with Starro’s screaming demise, an explosion of energy that had shot putted them back to a time of gold doubloons and sea shanties and lives spent far afield from the rest of humanity, a place sketched between the sky and the sea.

After a month, he’d stopped expecting Hunter to show up any moment; after three, he’d started to let himself know that the man might never show. After twelve months, though, in the small hours of the swaying night, if he closed his eyes and let himself linger on it, he’d come to hope that the Time Master never would.

And that was all Clark’s fault.

Clark, who had taken to life at sea like he’d been born to it, like he’d grown up between the waves instead of among soybeans and tornadoes. Clark, whose barrel chest and hearty laugh had made him a crew favorite almost from the first, whose command over the men and women of their ship, the _Lightoller,_ seemed effortless. And when that wasn’t enough, when some new chippy or overconfident boy required correction, well. That's what Bruce was there for.

“They’re afraid of you,” Clark had said one night six months on as they lingered over the last of their repast.

“That’s the general idea.”

He felt Clark’s eyes on him. “And you’re sure you’re ok with that? Being the bad guy?”

Bruce caught up the half-empty cask, poured them both a long streak. “Yes. Somebody’s got to be, sometimes.”

“But doesn’t it bother you, the way they look at you? Some of the greener ones practically cower in fear.”

He snorted. “No. Why should it? Every ship needs its whip, Clark. And god and every person on this vessel knows that isn’t you.”

Clark was quiet for a moment. “I was worried,” he said. “When we first set this up. I thought you’d come to resent me.”

“For what?”

Clark said, softly: “I thought you’d hate not being in charge.”

Their eyes met in the sputtering light of the candle. “I trust you,” Bruce said. The words came out rusty. “And I know my own limitations as a leader. Let's face it: I don't have many more tricks than intimidation, and that only gets you so far. It was an easy call.”

Clark didn’t say anything again, drawing the silence out like taffy, and he didn’t look away, either. Huh. Bruce felt a warm, startled sink in his chest. 

“You’ve never said that to me before.”

“What?”

Clark’s mouth lifted. “ _I trust you_."

Bruce blinked. “Oh. I thought that was a given.”

“Yeah, well." That smile turned up wider. "It’s good to hear.”

Bruce took the last of his wine and swallowed it whole, stood. Ignored the burning rush he found in his chest. “Don’t worry about me, Captain,” he said. “I’m not afraid to be hated. And besides, not everyone needs to be loved.”

He was at the door before Clark spoke again, his voice gentle steel in the dark. “Yes, they do, Bruce,” Clark said. “Even you.”


	2. Chapter 2

In the real world, theirs, Bruce couldn’t imagine Clark saying such a thing; nor could he imagine how the words stirred him, the stubborn little ember they kicked up deep in his heart. Sleeping in his own bed, turning fitful into a few hours of sleep, he’d never thought of Clark’s hands, the long length of his body, of that dark head tucked dreamily against the back of his neck. Aboard the _Lightoller_ , though, there came a time when no night passed without those thoughts curling around him like sweet smoke and ushering his sore and sunburned body towards the still, warm waters of dreams.

When the daylight came and with it the hundred tasks that had to be attended to from the crow’s nest to the cargo hold, it was easy enough to shake free of them, these strange night time delusions; to climb out of his bed and into his boots and climb up to meet the sea and the quartermaster’s bitter, black tea. He would take the report of the watch and settle the past night’s quarrels--over money, most times; sometimes women, sometimes drink--and make sure all was as it should be before Captain Kent bounded up the ladder to greet the new day with a smile and a firm slap on the back.

“Master Bruce!” he would say, his eyes fairly glowing under the first hints of the sun. “How sails the _Lightoller_?”

“Straight and true, sir. Once again, we find the wind at our backs.”

"All is as it should be, then.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Very good.” A smile here, sometimes, the wind catching the length of his hair despite the blue ribbon tied at the base of his neck. “Bring the next watch ahead, please. I want to discuss the day ahead.”

Bruce would snap his fingers and the crew would come but it was Clark who they stared at, Clark who they stood straight for, Clark who they revered and sometimes, as was the way of a tight life aboard shift, adored. By the time they’d been aboard ship a year, a half-a-dozen crushes on the Captain (that he knew about, anyway) had flared up and broken out and it spoke volumes about Clark that those whose advances he gently rejected--those few he’d had to firmly eject from their presumptive place in his bed--seemed disappointed, yes, but not hurt or angry. One or two had stepped off at their next port of call in search of another ship, but most who Clark declined had stayed at their posts and, aside from a few lingering glances, had gone with their lives as before.

“It isn’t good for morale,” Clark said when Bruce asked. “A team can’t work effectively when there’s the perception that things aren’t fair, that people aren’t being treated equally.”

Bruce couldn’t help himself. “You read that in some management book?”

Clark turned away from the water. They were standing at the bow, watching a pod of dolphins race joyfully head. “No. It’s something my high school basketball coach used to say; kind of his basic philosophy. Always made sense to me.”

“You played basketball in high school?”

“Played?” Clark laughed. “Um, no. But I was a heck of an equipment manager. Nobody could wrangle those water bottles and dirty jerseys like me.”

“Huh.” Bruce had an image of a long-legged kid with dark-rimmed glasses and the best kind of smile, one that hid a hell of a secret. “I can see that. You always struck me as kind of a neat freak.”

That got him a snort. “Says the man who had a particular place for everything in his batcave. And as I recall, you label everything in there too, don’t you?”

“Shut up.”

Clark laughed. “I think you meant: _shut up, Captain_ ,” he said. 

Bruce grinned. It was ok; there was no one to see it except the flat white lace of the clouds, anyway. “Shut up, Captain, _sir._ ”

“Better,” Clark said. “Much. Perhaps we’ll make a proper seaman out of you yet.”

Yes, they could tease each other here; relax into a comfortable sort of camaraderie. Before, when the fate of the world had rested on their shoulders day after day, there had been a sense of tension between them, a wariness, a kind of unease--or so it had always seemed to Bruce. Now, when the only dangers were a rogue wave or a bad storm, a rival ship or an ambitious captain with eyes for their cargo, it was easier to be around Clark, to talk to him, to think of him as a friend. Because they were friends, weren’t they, at the far edge of the known world? At first, he’d been able to tell himself it was by necessity, but now, twelve months in, when the light of the future, his past, had begun to fade like tired tea leaves, when there were days when he forgot everything except the pull of the water, the sway of the ship, what it felt like to look across the galley and catch Clark’s eye in the middle of the crew’s revelry, mugs in hand and rum running free and the whole of life narrowed down to this moment, this place, the heat of drink and close quarters in his face, the pleasure of good company making him feel heavy and content. For all the strangeness of their circumstances, nothing in his life before had ever felt so real as all this.

“Master Bruce?”

It was Kenison, the captain’s steward. He was 15, skinny as a rail, and smart as a tack: a former stowaway who’d long since earned his keep. How the boy’s father--a zealot Liverpudlian preacher--had ever seen fit to boot him from the fold, Bruce could not rightly fathom.

“Hmm?” Bruce looked up from his tankard.

“Captain says you look tired, sir. Captain says you’ve, ah, had enough and should be getting along ‘ere now to bed.”

There weren’t many aboard ship who’d have been brave enough to deliver that particular message with a straight face and squared shoulders. He had to give the kid credit for that.

“Kenison, tell the captain to mind his own business, please.”

“Ah.” The boy bobbed his head a little, a sudden tinge of pink on his cheeks. “Er, Captain says he knows better than you, Master Bruce, and that you’d better go up now and get some air before’n he drags you up above decks himself.”

Bruce squinted over to where Clark had been standing, biting back the hint of a scowl. He couldn’t see him. “Did he now.”

“Um, yes. Sir.”

Truth be told, now that he’d had to set his mug down, Bruce was tired. They were a day off from Antigua after four weeks straight at sea, and the crew’s delight at the prospect of a few good days on land making the most of their time and their pay had given Bruce fits all day. There’d been more talk of obliging women and strong drink than there had been attention paid to all the work that still needed to be done. When Clark had announced this little celebration, the lights of land close at hand, Bruce had been nearly as grateful as the crew; his throat damn well hurt from all the growling.

Now, though, the rum had spread through his limbs and thickened his blood and each sip was more and more soporific and now that he’d stopped drinking, he could feel his exhaustion at last.

He peered up into Kenison’s face and let out a long-suffering sigh. “Very well. Tell the captain that I’ll take his advice. Just this once, though. Tell him not to get used to it.”

The kid looked horrified. “Uh, Master Bruce, I don’t think I--I can’t--”

Bruce planted a hand on the worn table before him and pushed up unsteadily from his seat. “Never mind, Kension, I’ll tell him. Next time I see him, that is.”

Technically, he didn’t need to go above decks to get to his cabin, but as soon as the warm night breeze touched his face, he was grateful that he had. The air was calm, the sea as settled as he’d seen it in days. He looked west, down the bow; it seemed that if he stretched out his hand, the land would be right there, rippling under his touch. High above, the sky turned, her hands so full of stars he wondered how they didn’t fall, how the velvet black wasn’t filled with streaks of brilliant, faraway light. He was alone on deck, the anchor thrown, and when he stumbled on his way to the rail, he laughed, a full-throated sound that shook the planks beneath his feet because there was no one, was there, in the whole great wide world who could see. When he reached the side of the ship, he laid his hands over worn wood and closed his eyes and breathed in the sweetness, the rightness, and he knew for the first time in a lifetime that which he could only name as contentment. How odd it was, he thought, how very fucking strange, that it should take a mistake for him to find it; no wonder that, in his old life, searching for happiness had seemed such a waste of time and mental energy. How much more important it felt now to embrace what he’d been given.

He moved not so much at a thought, but a feeling, a tug like an irresistible draw. It was only when he was nearly there that he realized where he was headed, where his feet were taking him, the reason for the flutter in his heart.

“Clark,” he said when the captain opened his cabin door. “Can I come in?”

It was only when he was inside, the latch locked behind him, that he realized that Clark was half-naked, stripped from the loose white shirt sleeves he’d been wearing all evening down to the stretch of bare skin. His hair was loose, too, jet black curls that fell just below his big shoulders, and his eyes, jesus god, his _eyes_ ; Bruce had never seen them so wide, nor so blue.

“Have you come to scold me?” Clark asked. His voice was playful. “Kenison told me you were none too pleased with my suggestion.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion. It was basically an order.”

“Yeah, well. You did it anyway, didn’t you?”

Something writhed in him, then, a great dark wave of wonder, and how they’d come so far without this happening before, in that moment, Bruce could not fucking understand.

“Clark,” he said again, deeper now. An unmistakable meaning.

“Bruce.” The captain touched his face, a quick slide of two fingertips that turned the world upside down, that set everything at last in its place. “Is this the rum talking, or is this you?”

“Both, probably.” Bruce caught his wrist and squeezed hard, left no room to run away. “But I know what I’m doing. I know what I want.”

“And what’s that?”

Bruce looked up. Watched his fingers brush the hungry curve of Clark’s mouth, watched Clark’s lips part for him, hot and wet. “Oh, captain. That’s you.”


End file.
